◊ Praetorian

It's also worth noting that I don't enjoy "race" games at all. I had 75k honor going into S3, spent 63k of it on new bracer/belt/boots/neck, and have zero additional planned purchases until S4. I can do my one honor daily and AV occasionally for fun and hit the new cap well before S4 begins. I do premade WSG and AB on those weekends, looking for fun matches against other good organized teams (we had a couple of fucking epic WSGs last weekend against an opposing team full of Gladiators/Duelists), and otherwise avoid PUG BGs whenever possible, except for AV.

That's the system. I have no incentive to "grind" honor or try to maximize my honor/hour or whatever. I participate largely for fun and steady progress towards what is now an easily attainable long-term goal. I'd rather log off and do something else with my time than the same tired AV race. AV is fun for me when we win 620-0, and boring and frustrating when the final score is 375-325. I enjoy the strategic thinking in terms of baiting the Alliance into overcommitting and then cutting their legs out from under them by tagging crucial graveyards. The goal is to get everyone to respawn at Stormpike, Aid Station, or cave. Do that, and we can crush them.

Of course I've never played AV for honor anyway, going back months. I just play to win. At least the game mechanics of AV are more aligned with my personal preferences now.

 

Kasi

Why would you want to play defence? Unless alliance is winning significantly more than half the games you will get far more honor participating in the rush tactics than by forcing a 30+ minute win. A 12 minute rush with 350-450 honor for both teams will get you a nice 1700-2000 honor per hour of time invested in the BG, which I think is what most want to get. Even with a lot of rush games you will sometimes get a nice drawn out game where there is more pvp.

The best thing to do would be to find 3-4 other people in the BG you can team with and do your best to take back IB tower and Tower Point. This will ensure that your rush team beats their rush team while giving you more honor. And best of all, alliance will still get a bit and will keep queuing for you to beat!

 

◊ zeidrich

And the other thing that this causes, of course, is the higher than normal chance that other players queuing for AB will now join a game that is 1500-400 in the opponent's favor. This is always frustrating.

 

Kasi

True, but part of that is that you really don't have alts. In all the time I've read and posted here, you are one of the few players I've read about who has never mentioned playing an alt in BGs or alt raids. Maybe you do and you just have never mentioned it, but I recall you making a post saying something to the effect that you didn't play alts much. So your character is always maxed to the gils and you don't really experience the crushing grind that is getting honor on multiple characters. Add in there that even when working towards honor and stuff you have plenty of excellent pve gear to slot in and you're really not losing that much.

But many of us are reaching 70 with vastly undergeared characters who we can not gear up through raids. All we have is a soul crushing grind in BGs where on top of having to get 75k+ honor to get the S3 gear we need another 60k+ to get full S1 gear to compete. What we care about is getting out of there with as much honor as we can, since running around undergeared in BGs and getting smoked is not a whole lot of fun. Add in there to echo Thorene's post above, for alliance in pugging BGs there isn't much options. EotS and WSG are awful for honor, AB is at best mediocre and really AV was the only way we had to get honor at a decent rate. The current map imbalances are killing people on many battlegroups due to the difficulty of gearing up.

 

• Juice

I realize you really aren't asking me for the answer - but in that position I'd consider transfering to a better battlegroup. You might want to stay away from Stormstrike, but there are likely better ones that actually have pvp in AV.

That isn't to say all is lost in your battlegroup. Stormstrike AVs used to be a pve race, one that horde would lose at least 50% of the time, prior to 2.3. I often played these AVs by myself, and never north of Snowfall. I'd roll around back-capping and harassing their warmaster kills. This sucked as a rogue (my alt) but was great as an elemental shaman - so YMMV based on class. I had a great time because I'd typically meet 1-2 significantly undergeared players in a tower or open field and lay waste to them.

In games where I had a friend or two with me, we vocally called for defense and often got it. A defense of 5 slowed alliance down enough to give our offense a chance and added a lot of kill honor to our final score. You could do the same with your alliance team, setting up a stout defense at SP GY. This may not result in victory given the reinforcement system, but it's not a 30 on 1 or a 1 on 30 combat situation.

 

thevidon

I had an awesome AV last night. Horde had about 20 people on offense, 5 on base defense and 15 at IB. We initially lost IB to the alliance, and a 20 minute 30 person battle ensued at IB. There was strategy on both sides and even HEALING (really good healing). We eventually pushed them out of IB and finished off the game.

I had forgotten just how much fun a protracted battle over a point of contention can be. I really really miss the old graveyard by graveyard 5 hour epic AV.

Disclaimer: this post made from a "most fun" perspective not a "most honor per hour" one. I have to say that my HK honor was amazing that game.....more than made up for the extended time.

 

Ngita

How much honor did Alliance get? How would you feel if you had spent that amount of time and effort for that reward. Dont get me wrong I can enjoy a hard fought losing game but after 5-6 in a row it gets very old. Especially when all your gettting is Hk honor which vanishs due to diminishing returns . In the past if Horde put up a good defence it didnt matter if it took 30 mins to cap a tower and 2-3 hours to work your way across the map as their was a good chance all the people stuck on bridge defence would last awhile.

Apparently Bloodlust was down to 7 Av's and a 40 min queue last night as compared to 30 av's a week ago and numbers like AV 97 and AV 101 in the past. Alliance has well and truly left the building, Starting with the quality, active players first.

The easiest solution allowing random sides could have been adopted a long time ago ,so is unlikely to be introduced now and I really cant see them making large scale changes to the map layout.

The next AV weekend wil be interesting as based on previous Horde behaviour I would expect Alliance to try forming groups but until then I expect the queues to continue to lengthen.

 

malthrin

When talking about AV, it bears repeating that the experience may be different in other Battlegroups. I primarily play on Mal'Ganis (Stormstrike), but I also try to keep up with BG dailies on a Rogue on Magtheridon (Ruin). Both are Horde. Today's daily was AV for both, so it was a perfect opportunity to compare. On Stormstrike, the usual strategy involves playing defense with the goal of denying every objective to the Alliance. Coming from that, it was surprising to queue on Ruin and lose my first two games in <12 minutes each for 250 honor; both sides played a 100% rush game, and talking to other players in the BG that seems to be the norm. My third game I convinced 10 people to play defense, and the result was the usual 35 minute Horde victory with a full red map and 900 honor after HKs.

I'm not trying to demonstrate the superiority of either of those approaches, just relating an anecdote demonstrating how different your experience of AV and Battlegrounds in general can be depending on your Battlegroup.

edit: for added data, Horde queues are up to 50 minutes on Stormstrike and instant on Ruin

Travian - Resto Druid
Malthrin - Priest

 

Amera

Rampage has more or less settled into the total rush strat, which is great for honor on both sides. Cap FW and RH, then get IB and hold towers. If you happen to kill Drek, great. If not, you still get ~200 honor in 10 minutes which still beats anything other than 5 capping in AB.

Probably 1/3 or 1/4 games ends with horde having a big D, however, and just making it impossible to get any bonus honor, so many people just alt-f4 out of the game and join another.

I'm wondering how many geared people would it take to just waltz straight to Van or Drek and kill him without capping anything else. The other day a group of about 12 people from the same server were in my AV and literally just ran right to drek and killed him without a single tower or gy. It was like 200 honor in about 5 minutes flat.

 

Aylin

May I suggest that there may be a correlation between the amount of honor alliance is getting per game and the average queue time for horde? After all, a big incentive to play BG is the chance to build your character through honor gain.

Which can then lead to the discussion of time vs reward in the current AV. Do you think there is a problem? If so, what are some of the possible solutions, and how can we make AV fun and rewarding for everyone?

 

Duilliath

I do feel that there'd be a correlation. Recently had the AV daily and went in with my Rogue. Having not really played AV a lot after that disastrous AV weekend, I figured I'd give it a go. 20 minutes later and 42 honour bagged, I decided "To hell with it".

After a couple of fully exalted characters you have pretty much seen enough AVs to last you a lifetime if it weren't for a proper honour gain. With that honour gain removed, it's like all the other BGs, except worse.

I think the number of AVs on my Battlegroup went down as well - used to be up in the 50s, nowadays it's more like 20ish AVs running.

 

Emeraude

You forgot the ring.

I also stopped playing AV after I got 75k honor and hit the cap. I think I played one more series of games to get one additional item(The ring Gurg! THE RING!). But, I hadn't stepped foot back in there since then.

I've tried playing AV over the past few days, and Shadowburn Battlegroup Alliance have fallen into failing on offense, and I mean perfectly failing.

Some go to Galv, some go to Iceblood, some go to the Relief Hut, and all of them wipe. None of them can agree what to do on offense anymore. At least when they attempted to take Iceblood they would by the sheer volume of players there take it on occasion, some of them have settled in to the mentality that Iceblood just cannot be captured no matter what, and insist the best way to win is to try and take the RH and kill Drek with Iceblood Tower and Tower Point still up for 300 honor.

It's really pathetic, and I'm rather disgusted by the mentality of it all. =/ AV was fun at first, now it's back to retarded for me at least, I can't tolerate being in there once again, which is sad because for a while it was fun, I could count on the mindless Alliance zerg to make simple plays to win(Cap GYs, take towers), while I made small game changing plays to halt or slow up the Horde advance(Defend towers, recap GYs). Now they can't even do that right, and I don't see any improvement coming because it's the blind leading the blind and people who don't know how to play guiding the other slow kids.

 

Thud00

Played a few more games yesterday and things have changed.

No more are the horde defending leading to the PvP battles. Now its all rush to general and nobody on defence. Nothing is back capped. The games lasted 12 mins avergae with alliance winning most. Not suprising since they do the old SF, Galv, IB run. None of the horde are itnerested in defence again. They want to to get in and out to maximise honor.

So we need another change to prevent the races. Honor is killing all the BG. I dont want anything from BG I play for fun. Its the honor farmers that ruin the gameplay, they dont want to play they want the welfare epics.

 

• Juice

The way to fix what you're talking about is to bring 5 friends into AV with you. 5 coordinated defenders against an uncoordinated offense will wreck havok. This is how horde in Stormstrike won in my experience. When we didn't play D, we lost the pve race. That hasn't changed, and now in my BG we play a lot of D and the alliance is trying to adapt (and do a lot of quitting).

 

◊ Lord BEEF

The problem with horde defending is that it's a bit like inviting your friend over to play Mortal Kombat, except every match you get a flawless victory and a fatality against them. They don't want to keep playing after a few of those, hence the 50 minute queues

It'd be nice if they'd just mirror the map already, or even make you on a random base each game so people can really get an idea of the map issues.

 

◊ Praetorian

Blessed Band of Karabor and the Hyjal Exalted ring remain pretty clearly superior in my view, so no ring for me.

 

diospadre

heh this joke i just told in gchat was good but i think it needs a larger audience

 

Drunkmunky

Dark Legacy Comics

I fear that this is pretty close to home, I feel for the alliance that have to put up with such stupidity.

 

Emeraude

I would have posted that, but I didn't know how people would react.

But yeah, Alliance PvP in BGs is becoming a WoW-wide running joke, I'm thinking the Boomkin is getting more respect then my faction nowadays, and that is madness.

Hopefully the situation corrects itself, or Blizzard makes Battlegrounds identical to calm the masses in terms of terrain balance.

 

Krellian

I have indeed made this suggestion, or something similar, on the WoW suggestion forums. Hopefully someone at blizz sees it. I do enjoy CTF, however the complete turtling nature of WSG means I avoid it unless we are premade on a wsg weekend.

 

Krellian

I agree 100% with you sir. The sheer time sink that honor farming is, is what fosters afkr's. BG's are alot of fun, but 200 hrs of BG's is not fun. Honor gain should be 200% of what it is now, or item costs should be 50% of their current value. BG's are for flexing the epeen, people would do them regardless if there were expensive rewards. (as they do BG's even after getting all the items)

 

Calantus

And you're playing a drinking game where the winner takes a shot.

 

Nite_Moogle

Getting back to the reason why the Alliance seems to be losing hand over fist (at least from what I've seen) is that their previous strategy of stonewalling the horde at Stormpike until somebody can sneak in to the horde base and capture the relief hut simply doesn't work in the limited number of reinforcements that they get. It was a valid strategy pre-2.3 because breaking the stalemate was the only way to win and the sudden capture of the RH was usually enough to tip the balance, and the Horde usually needed everyone on offense to overcome the NPC-assisted Alliance defense. It's a quite simple matter of refusing to change strategy to compensate for the new rules, regardless of how the Horde bosses are harder than the Alliance bosses.

Though I have an admittedly small sample, I've yet to see a game where the Horde didn't have Stormpike contested within a minute of the game opening and this just blows my mind. It's nigh impossible for the alliance to get through that choke point without massive casualties, and every single game they lose 15-50 reinforcements from the 5 or so horde that sit there and pick people off that try to run past. Snowfall is still the first place they go-- why do no groups go straight for Iceblood? This is essentially what the Horde do every game and without holding IB the Horde's offensive reinforcements can flow back and forth without being picked off.

 

Drunkmunky

This would probably be quite difficult and time consuming to code (no idea?) but why don't blizzard swap map positions between Horde and Alliance for a week and see what happens, if the map is truly imbalanced then that would prove it and then they could act upon it. If it shows there is no imbalance then we can all have a chuckle at those silly whiners I'm sure there has been internal testing of AV terrain but has blizzard ever made an official response to the issue?

 

Cwealm

I quit AV except for when it is the daily, and half the time I don't even do it then. The options in my BG are lose slowly for little to no honor, or lose badly for less honor. I don't even care about the honor because I will be honor capped before I need another item. But the losing gets old, especially losing in such a humiliating manner.

The most depressing thing is you can tell in the first thirty seconds whether or not you are going to lose- whenyou see the entire team stream to Galv, you might as well get someone in your guild queue you to Ab or WSG or just go ahead and afk, because you are going to lose. Period. More than likely, you are going to lose 600-0 after 35 minutes.

That simply isn't fun. Hell, it is less fun than pugging alliance AB (aka "Let's forget to cap stables, charge farm, and then get farmed in the trollbane GY"), and that is saying something.

My AV days are over. At least I can group up with my friends for EOTS, AB, and WSG.